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That one customer who insisted on wireless sensors in his brick house
I had a guy last month in Denver who absolutely refused to let me run any wires. He wanted a full system with 14 sensors, all wireless, in a 1920s brick bungalow. I tried to explain that those thick walls will kill the signal, especially between the basement and the second floor. He said he didn't care, just drill through the mortar and mount them. Well, two days after I finished, he called me back because half the sensors kept going offline. I had to go back and add two repeaters and still the back bedroom window sensor drops out when it rains. He finally admitted I was right but still blamed me for not warning him stronger. Has anyone else dealt with customers who just will not listen about signal loss in old masonry?
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barbara_kim2mo ago
Oh, come on, you're being a little hard on the customer here. Wireless is supposed to be wireless, right? That's the whole selling point. The tech specs say it works through concrete and steel, and a guy paying for a premium system has every right to expect it to actually work that way. If the stuff can't handle some old brick and mortar, maybe the problem isn't the house, it's that the manufacturer oversold the range and you took their word for it. Plus, drilling into mortar on a 1920s bungalow is a pretty standard approach, and it's not like you're running wire through a steel vault. I bet if you had just put the repeaters in during the first install and charged him for them, he'd have grumbled a bit but that would have been the end of it.
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oliver_torres41mo ago
Wait, you actually think drilling into mortar on a 1920s house is standard, @barbara_kim?
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